HARTZEL--I did not say he was a scoundrel. Eh? (_To Rudolph._) Did I? Did I, Max? (_Calling to Canzler._) Where is he going? I don't doubt he's been wronged; I don't doubt that. Where's he-- (_Fritz comes forward._) RUDOLPH (_To Max._)--We must leave here. FRITZ-- We must stay here. (_In Hartzel's ear._) He says we, too, must leave here. HARTZEL-- Leave? What for? What have we done? FRITZ-- But I say stay and die. Let them thresh us out, too. (_To Max._) What do you say? RUDOLPH--What do you say, Max? MAX-- I say stay and live. They cannot kill us. RUDOLPH-- How so? MAX-- If they do, They must kill Oswald, too. Then where's the child? (_Fritz and Rudolph exchange glances._) Where then's Val-father's promised child? FRITZ-- Max-- RUDOLPH-- No. CANZLER-- (_Returning to the stump._) The question, Hartzel, is not what they've done; It's what they think they have a right to do. They own, they think, our bodies and our brains. There is no thing or thought or word or deed Can take its way, but must report to them And square itself and do a bondman's work. They have a right, they think, to chop the North, Lop off her great green boughs and graft instead The South's pale branches. FRITZ-- To bear bastard fruit. CANZLER--The oak's red blood must nourish olive leaves. They would remake the world Val-father made And take the seasons from his great right hand. We must be like them or be not at all. Like them in manhood, Hartzel? FRITZ-- No; in Faith. And even their gods know not the Saxon tongue. RUDOLPH--If a man speak Val-father's name, he dies. MAX--And we must die if we be not baptized. FRITZ--Must even ask of them what we may eat! CANZLER--Why is it not enough to be a man? To do a man's work and to live a life Free like the wild deer, and to grow like these? (_He looks about upon the trees._)